Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 5.djvu/183

 JOAN OF ARC 115 She was twelve years old when the dauphin was proclaimed king by his few followers ; and in all his flight from province to province, fleeing before the usur- pers of his throne, no heart in all France suffered more keenly than the heart beating in the breast of this humble shepherd girl. The misfortunes of the dau- phin, the woes of her country, took complete possession of her expanding mind. Her pure young soul yearned toward the Infinite in one ceaseless prayer ; and when any soul is so lifted up above all thought of self, praying for the good of others, a response never fails to come. It is only selfish prayers which remain unanswered. Joan's beautiful nature was like the sensitive plate prepared to receive the impression ; and while she prayed the angels to save France, the angels prepared her to become the saviour. One summer day, when she was in her fourteenth year, she was running in the fields with her companions, when, as she afterward declared, " she felt herself lifted as by an invisible force and carried along as if she possessed wings." Her companions gazed upon her with astonishment, seeing her fly beyond their reach. Then she heard a voice, which proceeded from a great light above her ; and the voice said, "Joan, put your trust in God, and go and save France." This strange experience filled her with terror ; but ere many days she heard the voice again, and this time she saw the figure of a winged angel. " I am the Archangel Michael," the voice said, "and the messenger of God, who bids you to go to the aid of the dauphin and restore him to his throne." Overcome with fear, she fell on her knees in tears ; but the angel continued to appear to her, accompanied with two female forms, and always urging her to go to the aid of her country. Fear gave place to ecstacy, and in the heart of this divine child awoke the audacious idea whose climax astounded the whole world. At first she reasoned with the voices, telling them " she was but a poor girl, who knew nothing of men or war." But the voices replied, "Go and save France ; God will be with you, and you have nothing to fear." During three years she listened to these voices, which made themselves heard by her two or three times each week. She seemed consumed by an inward fever, and strange words escaped her. One day she said to a laborer, that " midway between Coussi and Vaucouleurs there lived a maid who should bring the dau- phin to his throne." These words were repeated to her father and they alarmed him ; and we can- not wonder that they did. How could he think otherwise than that his little girl was losing her senses? How could he dream of the divine and superhuman powers that had descended upon her from a higher world ? He told her brother that if Joan should attempt to follow the army, as he feared she might, " he would rather drown her with his own hands." Her parents set a watch upon her movements, and decided to marry her to a young man who was secretly en- amored of her. They connived with this admirer to swear before an officer of the law that Joan had promised him her heart ; but she so strenuously denied the assertion before the judge that she gained her case.